Animating the Letter: The Figurative Embodiment of Writing from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance

The beautifully designed and executed letters of illuminated manuscripts endowed the text with a presence and authority that permitted the written word to rival and finally surpass oral remembrance. Kendrick's analyses the reader's perception when confronted with a text inspired by the living force of the author, such as Gerald of Wales' response to the now lost Gospel Book of Kildare. This volume, written during an age removed from the physical act of writing by computers, is not only about the relationship between text and image, religion and writing, reader and writer, but is also a history of the book itself. This challenging and specialist treatise concludes with an index of manuscripts.